So this change of locale brought me to a particularly odd nodal point in one Thomas Hoving. Thomas Hoving was the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art affectionately known as the Met by more cultured personages than myself. Hoving isn’t someone I’d particularly search out as a fascinating topic of discussion. Hoving isn’t a dragon or a fucking unicorn. Hoving didn’t openly use psychedelic drugs. Hoving doesn’t wax poetic about whiskey or craft beer. Hoving doesn’t make loud, abrasive music. Hoving certainly doesn’t hold a spray can effectively, at least not within my current level of familiarity with the man and his legacy.

But Thomas Hoving apparently did a whole slew of things within his lifetime that the arts community respected enough to write a particularly engaging article in Art Forum. And seeing as how I was a captive audience nursing two types of head wounds (a punch to the jaw from an errant mosher and a blow to the liver) I was all eyes. And so I cupped my head in my hands and began reading the story of Hoving, who at exactly my age of thirty six had become the director of the Met bringing a sense of showmanship that would be both ridiculed and respected by New York and beyond.

I imagine Hoving as being some sort of Indiana Jones of the art world though thats probably the most gutteral way to refer to him. The man was obsessed with finding art attested by his mantra “When I see something I want, I do everything I can to get it.” Clearly, this is a man that does not fuck around; the gears grinding behind the sinuses operating with otaku-like fervor. Its that instinct that you come to respect over the course of the ten or so odd minutes it takes for me to ingest and reflect. Here is a guy that sees an object come into being and immediately recognizes its autonomy and metaphysical sentience, right?

Which leads Hoving to the rather dicey matter of the Bury Saint Edmund’s Cross also knows as the Cloisters Cross. In Hoving’s 1981 tell all some twenty years after being aquired with Hoving’s aid for the Met he describes it as follows:

“The inscriptions on it are so hate filled and yet its such a masterwork. Its as if Hitler and Michaelangelo collaborated to make a masterpiece.”

Its about here where either the caffeine is starting to settle in or Art Forum just turned into the printed media I should have stolen from my ex before vacating our mutual agreement of cohabitation. Because clearly, this Hoving character is someone that should’ve been physically on my radar. Its not that I idolize the above statement. I’m clearly the most apologetic white male I know. But it blows the mind that this man facilitated the purchase of an object based on artisan merit alone. And then hid the rather sickening nature of its true meaning lost upon those not hip to the lingo of the 12th century monastics, which have the museum and art community backpedalling to this day.

In true Guattarian form, the object and the artist were at a standoff between master and servant. Here was a piece of craft that was given the chance to be respected on its own autonomy, free of the ideology and hate inscribed by the creator and their Creator who art in Heaven. Hallowed be thine name. Therein lies the maverick nature of Hoving which admittedly could have been construed as a tad bit reckless and nieve. An article of transgression far more radioactive than Serrano’s Piss Christ, the Cloisters Cross goes beyond questioning the desperate idiocy of religion. And the curator makes this statement by standing behind it and selecting it and willing into being the funds and stage to make it possible.

Its there where you wonder why the fuck it took you this long to come across this guy who began to subvert and revolutionize an institution at an age where you piss away your PBR night by night in dirty loft bathrooms. Why hasn’t this guy popped up on the facebook feed of your four hundred and forty three friend collection (surely four hundred and fifty by now?) Why wasn’t a scandal of this magnitude lodged deep in your consciousness as much as Serrano’s aforementioned work that motivated Jesse Helms and crew? Could it be a testament to the genius of Hoving, the once proclaimed PT Barnum of New York Art? That Hoving knew what real art was and did his best to represent it in its true light.

Those musings are left to more informed journalists of highly lauded arts magazines and not to street level hip hop emcees who find it painfully hipsterish to be reading a token copy of said magazine in public. If there is any message within the story of Bury Saint Edmunds for myself, its not for me to ramble on about any more than I have already. I am already at risk for sounded far too smart and informed for my own good on the internet. I’m sure the next time I’m sitting at the bar this meditation will come in handy wafting off the whiskey vampires and waves of herpes perched on my peripherary.

And to think, I’m only on page forty six.

Thomas Hoving’s book “King of the Confessors” is available on Amazon.

You can subscribe to art forum at a special discounted rate of 46$ for a year subscription online here.

He gets to the gig super early so no one sees him lugging his gear up the stairs. He argues with promoters and club owners over their shrewd observations. After all, if he is having fun on stage, why should he be getting paid in the first place. And he muses in his closet studio why he doesn’t have more time to paint when he consistently has to rehearse for critics who will ultimately say he obviously didn’t practice enough in the first place.

When you’ve spent most of your adult life enmeshed in the dance music scene, you get very adjusted to the desires and whims of fellow producers and musicians. A friend of mine refers to the specific mode of speak that develops from these desires as ’shop talk’ of which she dreads almost as much as cat hair and pollen. Its a consistent filler of a void quite possibly from the innermost wishes to be one’s own boss. To take that entrepreneurial spirit by the balls and make something of one’s self and one’s music. To sell records and collect the spoils that lie beyond. To hustle to the point where you become a walking robotic mess, poisoning past friends and confidentes with near saccharine proportions. To make money doing what you fucking love which will ultimately become what you hate in the end.

I can’t bother to promote myself worth a shit anymore to be honest even if blogs and constant status updates seem like some half assed attempt. Music and art to me no longer have much financial meaning to me either way. I can’t spend much time at all in any sense creating consumer based packages for people. In this day and age, I write music to mark the times much like marks on a calendar. Sometimes, they are like arts and crafts for friends and family. Little souvenirs that acts as curios on a shelf to remind people that I might not be all that self absorbed. Small, coded gifts to personas that keep me living and breathing through the boredom and the mire.

Its a hard sell especially in the wake of whatever finger pointing that is status quo in these compact urban areas full of skinny jeans and ironic t-shirts. I’ve caught myself more than once in the past months misdirecting scorn. But its so hard to navigate. Its always hard to tell who is seriously damaged and who is just trying to be and therefore which one is the lesser of two evils. Who is an auteur and who has an insidious and devious agenda.

Which brings me to P.W. Elervum, self confessed poem printer, record label owner and souvenir vendor. I was introduced to him through my weekly CD trade with my friend Matt at Handlebar. Knowing my current obsession with doom and sludge metal, his suggestion of Mount Eerie was based on the press’s adoption of the Black Metal tag for the new album “Wind’s Poem.” And its a dangerous labeling at that. It bares the teeth of parties on both sides of the wolf pack. The same people who both despise the hipster fetishization of niche genres and the lack of purity and homogeneity that comes with padlocked scenes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rck9Qt-2RA

The opening chords of “Wind’s Poem” are a reminder and a nod to Elervum’s obsession of such one man bands like Xasthur, who so happens to also be on the short end of the Black Metal stick. You see black metal means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. If I spent a whole blog dedicated to it, it would sort of have me spiraling into some sort of de ja vu with the dance music scene. There is a certain production ethic and thematic ideal. And therefore, I’d gather a certain currency evoked from being a black metal musician. As ridiculous as this all sounds, Venom sounds almost nothing like Burzum or Darkthrone as does Bone Awl or even on the very far end of the spectrum, Nachtmystium, as U.S. inspired black metal acts.

Mount Eerie has more in common with Xasthur and little known projects like the forgotten Brazillian demo by Thy Light. Its in nature borrowing closely from a genre that is most commonly referred to as suicidal black metal. And truth be told, if you take it all the way back to bands like Mayhem to the days of lead singer, Dead, it has more of a common root there than shitty production values. Dead originated corpse paint. He literally buried his fucking clothes in the ground until they’d rot just to get the smell of death on him. This was a guy who knew he was going to die and was not happy in the slightest about it. And he used his music to address it.

Now keep in mind, its not the easiest way to get the girls or get that money. But the question why was pretty fucking obvious. Which is where if you analyze the story behind P.W. Elervum and Mount Eerie, you can understand the similarities. This is a guy that wrote a whole microphones album as a story of him dying and ascending. And thus from those ashes was born the project of Mount Eerie that speaks of the wind as the destroyer of worlds. That muses “nothing means nothing… everything is fleeting… don’t get used to it.” That speaks of being “buried in space” and “driving to work in the morning… we live in graves.”

Which brings me to my inspiration by such things and why I do the things that I do. I can only aspire to be a printer of poems and a souvenir vendor. I can peddle my whittled goods on the back porch of the internet while engaging you in some witty banter. And you can listen, preferably at a distance. Because the reason why I do things are similar to the aforementioned. Its not shop talk. As much as I may be associated with certain projects tangentially, I have no real interest in anything other than creating.

I recently read something about Xasthur and how he never intended to ever play any of his compositions out. I have to empathize with him on that. There is something very claustrophobic and special about recording. Certain music was meant to be enjoyed live and the “why we do it” feeds into some sort of vapid exhibitionism. But sometimes, sitting alone in your studio which generally is more like your studio apartment, can’t be translated to a larger audience. Because for the most part you are writing for one or two people… or maybe even one or two types of people and all that really matters is if you get it.

Which is why sometimes records like Mount Eerie, Thy Light, and Xasthur are so special. Because they aren’t made to be listened to by anyone other than kindred spirits. People who understand that points connect beyond genres, titles, rules of engagement and scene driven shop talk. That everyone’s voice is different yet speaks the same old, torrid litany.

“THE WHOLE LIVERY LINE
BOW LIKE THIS
WITH THE BIG MONEY ALL
CRUSHED INTO THESE FEET.”

entromc-thewholeliveryline-roughdemo.mp3